Page 52 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“I want to know all your weaknesses. Every single one. Are you afraid of suffocating?”

His breath hitches. “I don’t—”

I shush him, then slide my hand to the button at his waistband, pop it free, and shove his shorts and underwear down. His skin is fever-warm, goosebumps rising instantly against the chill of the table. I want his shame, his want, all of it mingled, pure. I want to see what happens when the dread crests the pleasure, how far he can ride the seam.

He catches my wrist. “Camille—”

“Yes?”

“You—” He clamps his mouth shut, but I see the truth in the way his thighs edge apart.

“You want this,” I say, and when he shakes his head, I take him by the chin and force the words out of him, thumb pressing into the soft part under his jaw until he gasps. “Say it.”

He fights it, lips pressed in a bloodless line, but I lean close and let my tongue flick the ridge of his collarbone, slow, and he shivers, all the way to his toes. I feel the wild drumming beneath my hand, and I want more of it. I step back.

“Get up,” I say. He obeys, hands shaking. “Take off your shirt.”

He blinks, unsure, but then pulls his shirt off over his head, leaving him bare except for the open overshirt, which hangs from his shoulders like a cape. The vulnerability of it, the absurdity, makes me want to break him open and drink whatever spills out.

“Come here.” I catch the overshirt and twist him so his back is to me, then wrap my arm around his neck, just so, not tight, but a promise. “Is this what you want?”

He makes a wounded little sound. “I—”

“You can tell me no,” I remind him, mouth at his ear, though I know he won’t. “You can always say stop.”

He doesn’t. So I go further. He arches back, caught in the crook of my arm, and I slip my other hand around to the front, down his bare stomach, stopping just above the line of his pubic hair.

I want him to feel like prey, a trembling thing about to be devoured.

I reach for my belt, and the second the leather whisper is audible, he goes still.

“Camille…”

I slide the belt off and loop it once—then twice—around his neck, buckle resting high against his pulse. He jerks instinctively, but I steady him.

“Tap my arm three times if you need to stop,” I instruct before pulling it tight, his eyes going wide.

My fist tightens in the belt as the other hand migrates downward, palm firm on his abdomen, then lower—two fingers grazing the seam of slick flesh, already warm, already pulsing. He shudders, and it takes no effort at all to breach him, two fingers at once, then three, not slow, and not gentle. He makes a small, strangled sound that could be pain or pleasure or both.

“Are you afraid?” I ask, my lips close to his ear, my voice even. “Are you afraid of being torn open?”

He claws at the steel table, hips bucking forward to escape, but I follow, crowd him, keep the pressure constant. The belt tightens another notch. His lungs heave, and beneath me his cunt spasms, greedy and wanting. I fuck him with my fingers, steady, stretching him with each thrust, feeling the clutch of muscle and the thermal heat of his body. When my fingers scissor, he keens, head snapping back against my shoulder, eyes rolling. I let him breathe, just for a heartbeat, then draw the belt taut again.

“Is this what you want?” I say, fingers buried to the last knuckle, palm grinding against the hard bud of his engorged clit—no, his cock, I remind myself. His slutty, dripping, fucking delicious, tiny, little cock. “To be split open and made helpless?”

He tries to answer, but his voice is gone; all that emerges is a hiss, a trembling. His thighs shake. I fuck him harder, savoring the way his cunt spasms around me, the way his entire body goes taut, hungry for release.

“Are you afraid,” I say, “of what you might do if you couldn’t close? If you just opened and opened, until there was nothing left to hold you together?”

His legs buckle. He makes a noise so sweet and ruined; I want to bottle it, keep it for the dark hours of night. I let go of the belt and catch him under the arms as he collapses forward onto the cold steel, cunt still impaled on my digits. He wheezes, then sobs out a laugh, raw and shaky.

“You’re fucking insane,” he croaks.

“And you crave it.”

He tries to glare, but he’s gone soft and boneless; the fight is burned out for now. I draw my fingers free and watch his hole spasm at the loss.

“You can go if you want,” I tell him, voice gentle now. “But if you stay, you will take everything I give you. Do you understand?”